According to the organizers, the competition tests the ability of the nominated cities to re-imagine themselves. The 25 cities have succeeded in exhibiting a sustained and growing commitment to development.

The competition is sponsored by Citigroup in partnership with the Urban Land Institute. It recognises places where people, passion and ingenuity are shaping efforts to build sustainable and liveable cities.

“The Urban Land Institute used selected criteria to identify the initial 200 most innovative cities. The list was then narrowed down to 25 cities after an online vote by the general public and readers of the Wall Street Journal,” De Lille said.

The competition is now in its second phase, in which all 25 cities compete for a place on the shortlist of three finalists. The three cities with the highest number of votes will be announced at the Wall Street Journal Magazine Innovator of the Year Awards on October 18.

Thereafter, voting will resume until December 31, 2012 to determine the winning city, which will be announced in the Wall Street Journal Magazine early next year.

They were my brothers…and yours.
Four days ago, I woke up to yet another unspeakable tragedy.

Four young men, all undergraduates, brimming with great dreams, unfulfilled aspirations and a promising future were killed. To express the depth of my pain and shock at their murder is impossible. And understanding how events could have degenerated to this level is truthfully beyond me.

Lloyd, Ugo, Tekana and Chidiaka

Four promising young men whose lives were interwoven in one way or the other with yours and mine.

I mourn deeply with the families of these young men because this is OUR collective loss. They were our colleagues, our classmates, our neighbors, our brothers… our friends.

We are NOT a nation of barbarians. We CAN follow due processes and procedures. We MUST fight together as ONE NATION to ensure that Justice as a whole is served, and as a PROCESS, is duly followed-ALWAYS.

We can only try to make meaning of this senseless tragedy by ensuring that this WILL not happen again, by affirming that the pursuit of justice does not in any way entitle any of us to the willful elimination of other people’s lives and by ensuring that we, as youths, do not destroy the honorable mantle placed on us as the future of our nation, by eliminating our present.

Chinwe Biringa, mother of the murdered Chiadika Biringa, a second year student of Theatre Arts at UNIPORT had written a petition to the Senate President dated 9 October, 2012 with the title ‘’Petition: Gruesome murder of my son at Aluu, University of Port Harcourt host community.’’

The petition

Part of the letter which was addressed to the senate president reads: “my name is Mrs. Chinwe Biringa. I am the mother of Mr. Chiadika Biringa, a second year student of Theatre Arts at the University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT). My husband is a very senior staff officer at the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.

“My son turned 20 years old this week and we gave him pocket money to celebrate it with his friends. On Friday morning, we were called by my second son, also a UNIPORT student that all was not well and he was hearing bad rumours that villagers at ALUU, the host community of UNIPORT had murdered four students. I immediately rushed to the scene only to see my son’s dead body being taken away Unclad to a mortuary in UNIPORT Teaching Hospital. I could not believe my eyes and collapsed.

“What did my son do? What did the other three young men who died with him do? First, we heard that the four students were alleged to have stolen a Blackberry phone and a laptop computer. This could not be further from the truth. My son has had a Blackberry phone and in fact a laptop computer since he was in primary school. No way could my son steal such a common thing as a cell phone which every village woman now owns.

“We have been subjected to several gory videos and pictures on the internet. This shows that someone filmed the whole barbarism from beginning to end. My son and his friends were savagely beaten and burnt to death while villagers at ALUU watched. All this has been caught on film!

“The video shows that all this was filmed in broad day light which suggests that they were killed after 7.30 am. Further investigation has revealed that they left their friend’s house at ALUU at about 7 am to go and prepare for lectures.

“To waylay them and beat them with planks until they died like chicken is the most savage thing one can witness in Nigeria of 2012. First they were stripped Unclad, marched around like frogs and then beaten to death. What savagery and bestiality.

“My husband and I want only two things, namely: (a) To clear the name of Chiadika, (b) justice

“Your Excellency, every responsible parent knows what I, my husband, and the entire family are passing through over this beastly murder.

“Again, and for emphasis, the film shows everything in clear view and all the perpetrators must answer for their crimes.

“We want Justice. Those who murdered my son must face the wrath of the law.

Plot: Holmes and Watson are once again recruited by Mycroft to deal with a decidedly delicate situation. Reports of bodies mauled by animals in London are linked to the experiments of the maniacal and presumed deceased Doctor Moreau.Review: To say that there’s a resurgence in interest in the world’s most famous detective would be a very obvious thing. With the new popularity buoyed by the modern day interpretation on the BBC there comes a flood of new stories from a range of sources. Fortunately Adams has already had his thumb in the Baker Street pie, so this new novel does not come across as being on the bandwagon.

Adams writes this tale in the format used by Conan Doyle in that it is presented as an account of the case written by John Watson (although he frequently comments that it would not be published…